I am trying to connect to a solaris server using putty from a windows client. SSH connection is not working. The terminal window just gives an error message "Network error:Connection refused". Telnet using putty is working fine with the same server. Can someone please detail what configurations needs to be checked in this case? How to troubleshoot? (There are other servers in the same network which allows SSH connection.)

I know it seems a very obvious check. But have you confirmed that your Solaris server has a sshd running? Once you have telneted to the machine run netstat to see if it is listening on the ssh port (port 22). If it is then you next port of call will be to check /etc/hosts.allow and so forth as MathewC suggested

If this is Solaris 10, check if SSHD is running by issuing the svcs -p ssh command. That'll tell you if SSH is running, and, if not, why (maybe a dependancy failed for some reason, or maybe it was disabled).

In that case you can't use services. I would refer to the other answers (using ps -ef | grep sshd to check the process; netstat -a to check the port, etc.) to verify it's running. If it's not, track down where it should be started from (probably rc2.d or rc3.d, or part of the inetd startup). Also check your /var/adm/messages and /var/log/syslog files to see if SSHD attempted to start and caught an error. That could explain why it's not running.
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MilnerJun 19 '09 at 13:10